To Seek a Queen
by Nintaku
Summary: It's been so long since Alice restored her mind and brought peace back to Wonderland.  As Cheshire contemplates the rut his life has fallen into, he decides his only choice is to return to Alice's side.
1. Chapter 1

"What's so preposterous about a cat being such close friends with a human? She seems to like her dear Dinah well enough." He stalked around the forest alone, not searching for anything in particular to hunt. Merely playing one of his cat-games as he thought aloud. A light grin played perpetually across his lips as the thoughts purred from his mouth. "Preposterous, indeed. She's so much like the Queen, it's almost silly. So pushy and assuming. Like she owns the world. I'll just push her out of my mind. Wherever that's gotten off too..." The cat giggled a little, his pace slowing slightly.

Soon, he'd stopped entirely, in front of the path to the Mock Turtle. His paws vanished; first went the solid black of his fur, followed by the smokey grey stripes. The disappearing act continued up his body, until all that was left were his eyes, glowing points of green in the darkness of the wood. Soon, those too were nowhere to be seen. A low growl could have been heard nearby, had there been anyone there to hear it.

On the roof of the Mad Hatter's home, the cat relaxed and watched the tea party below. The Hatter and the March Hare stared insanely at each other over the table, each holding a shattered cup of tea. The tea was shattered, that is, not the cups. The Doormouse rolled over in an empty cup, yawning and smiling in her sleep.

Everything had been quite different, after Alice's experience with the force that had corrupted Wonderland. It was a darker place. There was night now. Colors were more pale, while light and shadow more vivid. Even Cheshire himself had become miscolored into his – rather fashionable, in his opinion – monochrome stripes.

"Her dark imaginings nearly killed us all," the cat mused, "and still I stayed by her side. I've always been there for her. How could she abandon me, like this?" With a glance down, he pursed his lips a moment before regaining his trademark grin. "Us. Abandon us, of course. I talk as if I'm the only one here. Little Dory misses her, too." For a moment, the cat looked down at the sleeping mouse, sweet little thing, and ran his flat tongue delicately across one of his sharp fangs. She wasn't awake to admire him with so much as a tremble, and so he slumped his head down onto his crossed paws.

"If only I could see into the mouse's dreams. I'm sure I'd find some mention of the girl in there, somewhere. Perhaps even a nightmare of Dinah." His grin became an outright smile to himself as a quiet purr rose from the back of his throat. "What a lovely piece of art, that Dinah..." The smile faded into a look of surprise, which quickly replaced itself with that self-assured grin. "What am I talking about? Me and Dinah? She's never even been here. We'd have no common interests. At least with Alice I'd have some decent conversation. ... Gah! I thought I was supposed to stop thinking of her!" The Hatter and Hare didn't bother looking up at his voice, which at this point was unaccompanied by his body anyway. They simply continued staring at each other, and smiled a bit. Dory mumbled to herself in her sleep. No one payed attention to that, either.

The cat's voice found him sitting in the Crossroads Tree. "What is it about that girl? There's more than enough to keep me occupied here, isn't there?" He barely took a moment to remind himself of the answer, the very reason he'd gone stalking nothing instead of watching the denizens of the world. "No... I've seen everything. Been everywhere. Even Alice's world. Such people. Horrid beasts, those humans were. Treating my poor girl like a monster. Injecting her with their so-called medicines and observing her hell from behind their safety glass. Sickening."

With a sigh, he looked out along the glowing path that led away to nowhere and remembered the first time she'd asked him directions. Then he remembered the last time she asked him advice. "How long has it been?" The question could have been about his grin, which was remarkably vacant from his face. "Her absence is so strong, I can feel it. Like the darkness from before, but... within. She's a part of us. A part of this place. We're linked to her, well obviously. We've all been through so much, because of her twisted, splendid mind..."

After some moments of sorrowful pining, the cat stood and stamped a claw into the tree's bark. It yipped. "I want her back. I want her to accept me! But she'll never do that so long as I'm just another cat." He looked down at himself; his thin frame, lean muscles and long tail; his glossy black fur with the smokey grey stripes; his claws. "Only a human boy is good enough for Alice, is that right?" The cat began visualising a form in his mind. It changed and fluctuated, eventually becoming such a jumble that even he couldn't comprehend it. "Hm," came his voice from a space just in front of his now-abstract body, "Harder than I thought."

Then he saw them: the slits of a dozen pairs of glowing red eyes coming from the darkness in the woods. Two stepped out, albeit there was no longer a cat in the tree, or even in the area. The beasts we indescribable. Longer claws than the cat's, certainly. They sniffed around for a bit, before leaving. The other pairs of eyes left, with them, and the cat returned to the tree, once again no more than a very special cat. "Bandersnatches? Still running about, here? This isn't good at all." He vanished again.

The cat reappeared in the King of Hearts's private chamber. Red seemed to be the motif here. Red paintings on the walls, red carpet, red cushions, red sheets, red pillows. A king wearing a red robe, asleep in the bed. And a black cat, standing over him on the bed, grinning down at him.


	2. Chapter 2

"Good morning, Your Majesty," purred the cat. The King calmly rolled over and hummed a quiet interrogative, something akin to "who?" and "what?" if the two were combined and then made completely unintelligible. As he opened his eyes to see the toothy grin and black fur of the cat, he bolted upright and clasped his hands to his mouth with the intention of catching his royal shriek.

"Sire!" said an Ace of Hearts, one of a pair (his counterpart being a Spade) who had come in on hearing the sound. "Are you alright?" The King was alone, of course, and slowly turned his eyes to the semi-alert card guards, hands muffling his response. The Ace leaned towards him and shook his head. "Forgive me, Your Majesty, but your hands are difficult to hear through." The King dropped his hands and took a deep breath, replying with a nervous and shrill voice.

"I said I am quite well, thank you. Return to your posts." He was not quite well, to be sure, but they'd known that for years now. The King had been having night terrors since he could remember, which was admittedly not a long span of time. As it happened, he'd also been having those terrors since the guards could remember, which was far more worrying. They assumed this was just another of them, saluted, and returned to their station outside the chamber door. The King looked around apprehensively once he was alone, and let out a sigh of relief, assured that he'd simply been dreaming.

The cat assured him otherwise. "Forgive me, sire." Another partial-shriek erupted from the surprised King, but this time no guards came in after him. The cat paced on the bed, watching the monarch put a hand near his heart and take some calming breaths. "You know how the rituals of courtly audience frustrate me so."

"Yes, yes, good morning and..." The small man rubbed his eyes and glanced at the windows. The curtains were still shut, but there was clearly no light coming in around them. "Did you say 'good morning'? There's no light." Some people focused on the least important things, thought the cat.

"You're awake now, aren't you?" came the sly response. It took the King a moment to accept this, but then he nodded and seemed content with that explanation. He was not, however, content with having been woken up.

"What's your business, cat? I am a very busy man, and my sleep cannot be interrupted for every little thing." With his small voice, the King tried to summon up every ounce of authority he could. With any luck, it would be enough to order himself some extra sleep. The cat stopped his pacing to lean down and stretch his front paws foward, shredding a small portion of the bedcovers with his disturbingly sharp claws. They were the only thing stopping the King from admonishing the cat.

"A bandersnatch in the forest is everyone's business, Your Majesty." The cat's smooth voice carried an air of non-chalance. The King's voice suddenly decided it needed to take an immediate vacation. When no reply came, the cat continued. "His friends looked hungry." At this point, the voice remembered that it had left its hat, came back to the King in the form of a mousey squeak, and then rushed off again. It took the color in the King's face with it. "I expect you'll have that solved by the time I come back, won't you?"

Here was where the voice received a very urgent letter bearing news of having just been inducted into the Interesting Things Hall of Fame, and that it should report back to its body immediately to claim its prize. When it did return, it found that the prize was actually a burly jailer with a mean attitude. The King's voice was, needless to say, quite surprised.

"What? Come back? Where are you going?" There were a great many things that could ruffle His Majesty like that. The cat enjoyed each of them immensely. As such, he suddenly felt the need to smooth the fur on the top of his head by first licking the back of a paw. This was very important. "This is a most serious matter!"

"Yes, it is," replied the cat, who had now stopped washing his head and was once again grinning at the King. "Your hand can trump a few monsters, mm? I am going to solve the problem at the source." It took a moment to figure out what the cat meant, but then the King's eyes went wide.

"Y-you mean you're going b-back to the human world?" The idea was perfectly sound, to be honest. It was the idea of being without the land's most deadly hunter and best source of information that upset the King. "Unacceptable! I forbid it!" To which the cat laughed, a sound that chilled the ruler to the bone.

"Your Majesty, would I ever leave without your permission?" It was very like a denizen of that world to answer a rhetorical question, and in fact fully expected. The cat was quite pleased that the King had resumed his quiet tones again.

"Y...yes?" He seemed unsure of where this was going, but was certain it wasn't anywhere good. As the cat's stripes began to change into puffs of smoke moving up his body, the King felt he should have just waved him off and bid him a safe journey. It was his paws and tail next.

"Then what makes you think you can stop me?" By the time the sentence finished, all that remained where the cat had been were black and grey wisps of smoke. The haze slowly cleared, and the King felt very alone. It was times like these he almost missed his Queen. Such a shame about her.


End file.
